Hello and Happy 2026! I hope you all managed the cerebral-hell-storm of last year as well as one could. But hey! What a year for video games though, right? I’ve always considered myself a massive fan of video games since pretty much my first actual memory. I feel like I began my conscious life as a kiddo playing Link to the Past on my parent’s SNES. Here I am, thirty some odd years later, still as obsessed with them as ever.
This year was a landmark year for me in terms of my playing habits. I don’t know how but after tallying up all the new releases I played this year I landed at a staggering 64 games that released in 2025. Overall I think this was a funny year. Triple A gaming didn’t have a huge hit, the word “indie” is getting more and more blurry, and hundreds of games hit eShops daily. At the risk of sounding like I’m reading tea leaves over here, it does feel like we’re in a shift.
So, let’s get into brass tax, huh? Let’s talk the structure for this list of mine. For the sake of keeping things kiiind of concise I’m going to write about my top 10 games of the year for me. Depending on how I ramble about them or what I focus on expect spoilers for the game! I’m just gonna issue a blanket warning for that up at the top. Okay! Let’s get cracking.
#10 Hades II
I know, I know. This placement might feel insane to some people! Supergiant’s Hades II is a triumphant sequel to their 2020 release, Hades. Instead of playing as beloved bisexual Zagreus running away from his daddy issues, we take on the role of his mysterious sister, Melinoë. Hades II is a sequel in every way, in simplest terms it just takes everything from the first game and adds more. More interesting weapons, more relationships, more crafting materials, more, more, more. It lives and dies by this, and for the moooost part it sticks the landing.
Like its predecessor, Hades II has a satisfying, roguelike loop between its isometric action combat and the visual novel moments. The combat in this compared to the first is staggeringly diverse. We’re no longer playing with swords and bows. Melinoë boasts some magic weapons that range from a long ranged staff to…a rocket propelled missile shooting cloak? Mel is lower in health than Zag initially but has many other tricks at her disposal. From run altering tarot cards to witchy familiars joining the fray there are seemingly hundreds of ways of customizing your Mel.
The minute to minute writing remains sharp, but where the game loses me a little is the overall narrative. Every aspect of the story in the first game is as tight as a drum and plays beautifully with the greater mechanics of the overall game. The ending for Hades II feels rushed, uneven, and honestly downright bizarre. I know I’m not alone in this criticism, as the studio went as far as to patch the ending, but I dunno…I already beat it, I’m not finding the desire to go back and do it again.
At the end of the day, Chronos is just not the baddie that Hades was, and the nature of Mel’s story being a forgotten child makes everything feel less personal and more distant. I do have a lot of love for a lot of these new characters. Some of the romantic interests are amazing, and Prometheus just might be the coolest boss and character to ever come out of the whole series.
The art in this game is breathtaking. The first game was already known for its menagerie of hotties, and they continue to all be just as beautiful in this one. Due to the story, all the Greek goods you’ve come to love are now clad in sparkling armor and framed with more panache.
The total knockout of the game for me, however, was the score. Darren Korb comes out with definitively his best work yet. The iconic Hades spooky synths are still on display throughout but Korb continues to push the boundaries of his instrumental palette with woodwinds, brass, and full on power ballads. It might just be my favorite video game soundtrack of the year.
#9 Pokémon Lazarus
For those that know me, seeing a Pokémon game in my top ten is not a big shocker. The major surprise here is that it is not one actually made by The Pokémon Company and Gamefreak. This one right here is a ROMhack, or in simpler terms, fan-made! Created by Nemo622, Pokémon Lazarus is a hack of Pokémon Emerald set in the Greek-inspired region of Ilios, and it is styled like a mix of second-gen and third-gen Pokémon games.
Before I get into the game proper, I know eagle-eyed folks are wondering where Pokémon Legends: Z-A (Pokémon’s official release from this year) landed for me and honestly! It was okay I guess. Some of the writing was…fine…The new battle mechanics were cool…uhh…outside of that there isn’t a ton of positive things I can say about it.
This game though is such a salve to those that are getting burnt out by the current releases/state of the main line Pokémon games. Lazarus plays just like your first favorite Pokémon game felt to play, but comes with an absolute bounty of quality of life improvements that make it feel so modern. You have multiple starters to choose from beyond just a select three, a very thorough stat editor, and so many move customization tools at your disposal. This makes building a party feel as good as its ever felt, being able to tweak natures to IVs with the level of control that for some reason the actual Pokémon games are seemingly terrified of implementing.
Pokémon Lazarus also comes with several other things to do beyond battling and catching these funny little digital creatures. A robust quest system keeps things fresh, as well as pinball and mining mini-games to help you grind for fun items. As shown above, it even has a fishing game packed in that is a dead ringer to Stardew Valley’s.
The environments in this game are cozy, varied, and so meticulously styled. Every route and town feels thoughtful and the game carries along with it a really fun day/night cycle that gives long stretches in the Ilios wilderness a really cool fun journey. The Gyms have more personality and theming to them beyond just types, and the story actually offers an interesting perspective into the biological and ecological study of Pokémon and how capitalism led pollution could have a negative effect on them.
At the end of the day I am a huge proponent for ROMhacks, it’s where a lot of unique takes come from in the Pokémon community and this might just be one of the definitive ones at the end of the day. Plus it’s as cheap as free too, just go check out Nemo622’s ko-fi and while you’re at it try their Emerald hack as well.
#8 Many Nights a Whisper
Oh my goodness, y’all. This game was completely out of my radar until some podcasts that I listen to mentioned it and I was immediately sold. Developed by Selkie Harbour and Deconstructeam, they describe Many Nights a Whisper as a game about pressure, dreams, and expectations. It is three dollars on Steam, and takes about an hour in total to play.
In short, this game is about a chosen person who has one try to shoot a fireball into a target to grant wishes. Every day you practice your shot for the ceremony, every night people come to you and you decide whether or not to grant their wishes. If you make the shot during the ceremony, all the wishes you chose will be granted. The caveat is if you miss your shot during the ceremony, the wishes will never come true. If this sounds even remotely interesting to you, skip to the next game on my list and go play this yourself. I beg of you.
As soon as you get hands on the practice portion of Many Nights a Whisper you immediately feel how herculean of a task it is to succeed. Initially it is a downright impossible shot, but because of the nightly rituals in the other half of the game, your shot improves every day, but you also have to adjust to the new strength of your sling every single day.
The nightly ritual for you is so fascinating. You kneel at a wall where people come to you with their desires. They stick their braided hair through the wall and explain to you what they wish for. If you want to grant their wish, you cut their braid (which is added to your sling). If you don’t want to grant your wish, you remain silent, and let them finish a prayer, and then they leave. There is something so intimate and intense about this whole process, and if you fail to grant any wishes, you will never gain the strength to make the shot.
The wishes range from something as huge as eliminating religion and gender from the world, to something as personal as someone wanting to find the strength within them to leave their hometown. Each one, however, has such an interesting lens over it when you realize the pressure that is on you. If I fail the shot, this will never, ever, happen. If I simply don’t grant it, who knows! It’s still possible. This puts you in such a unique headspace the entire game, and I pretty much impressed on the main character immediately.
This game says and does so much in 40 minutes that take some games dozens of hours. It made me laugh, cry, think, and then truly think over and over. Games like these are why I am so excited about small independent developers, and it’s one of those narratives that video games are perfect for.
#7 Hollow Knight:Silksong
Here it is everyone. After years of hype, shitposts, memes, and most notably silence from its developers, we get the sequel to one of the most beloved metroidvania’s since the genre’s namesake. Not only does this game stick the landing of its expectations, but dashes, leaps, flips, dives, and floats effortlessly through it.
Team Cherry’s Hollow Knight: Silksong feels like an all-timer as soon as you get hands on it. It falls to the number seven slot for me because well–admittedly–I didn’t beat it. Too hard! But really, I think that just doesn’t matter at the end of the day for me, and what this game does and what I saw positively floored me.
The game follows Hornet, a needle wielding bug badass, as she tries to find answers behind her kidnapping. What follows is a warpath along a haunted pilgrimage through desolate, hostile environments with even more hostile monsters within. This game is brutally difficult at times, with bosses or platforming challenges that ate up hours of my free time. But hoo boy…once I beat one, the high was like no other.
What really grabbed me about this game are the little things. I feel like so much focus, praise, and discourse around this game was about its difficulty, but I think Team Cherry greatest achievement was building a world and environment that feels so alive to the point that your are concerned for it dying.
When you kill ant warriors, smaller ants will take the remains and drag them away into unseen nests, when you play your instrument for the beleaguered inhabitants of Pharloom, they all sing unique songs of hope, faith, and loss. When you make your way beneath the Citadel, through the underworks, you find yourself in the mechanical guts of the city, where workers must pay an entire days salary to simply sit on benches to rest.
I’m happy the difficulty is here in this game for the sickos, but I really believe at the end of the day, what makes this game truly special is the hauntingly beautiful world Team Cherry has made here. It makes you want to explore every inch of this place, and it always rewards that instinct.
#6 FACEMINER
Now for something really light and breezy to discuss. Wristwork’s FACEMINER is a game about AI led surveillance, data mining, and the ocean’s we boil to achieve it. AI almost feels like the word of 2025, and the discussions around it have been absolutely inescapable. Regardless of your takes on it, I find that one thing about it absolutely undeniable and that is the environmental impact of it all.
FACEMINER is pretty simple as far as gameplay. You are a worker for some kind of data collecting business and your job is to train an AI model to recognize faces. It is an incremental clicker game that starts off with you manually buying packages of faces from various places (mugshots, social media sites, etc.) and you clicking on faces in each package. Eventually you get the ability to have the program automatically select faces, and then you begin to train the efficiency and accuracy of this program, and then you need to begin monitoring your storage and memory and cooling of your system, and theeeeen you need to manage your power, water, and emissions.
All of this is displayed to you in a small windows-like operating system, with a fiery drum and bass soundtrack. While you mine faces you get emails from your company, and fellow workers, all giving you tips on how to increase your facemining. You can also get access to different stores where you can adjust the numbers and tweak the dials of your facemining model with ease.
Like any incremental game this is all about seeing the number go up. The attitude of “more, more, more” is in direct conversation with the attitude of your fellow workers throughout the game. FACEMINER paints AI sycophants as a borderline doomsday cult. It’s never really clear to what end this is all for within the game, and really it doesn’t matter. It seems to reflect a real life attitude around AI that I’ve noticed to a degree. Where the people championing it are doing so in the name of improving the models that they use, with seemingly no real end goal in mind.
FACEMINER has the subtlety of a brick to the head. The greater you increase the output of your model, hotter the planet becomes within the game. It is a game that eventually begs you to stop doing what you are doing, sending you messages from environmental activists, old employees, and politicians pleading for you to cease mining faces. Towards the end of the game you begin to get flooded with imagery of floods and forest fires around the world that are your doing, and the very end of this game is beyond bleak.
As a game I think it handles brilliantly. A lot of incremental games are just a time sink to me. A fun time sink, but the engagement is minimal to none once you get some form of automation going. FACEMINER on the other hand really does a good job of spinning plates, and you can find yourself in situations if you aren’t careful where you are consuming too much power to afford to run your system. This slight shift in challenge made the process very satisfying. From mundane beginning to apocalyptic end.
#5 BALL x PIT
From Kenny Sun and Friends, BALL x PIT wins “best game with x in its title” this year from me. This year had a lot of stand out games that were taking the Vampire Survivors formula and adding a neat twist on it. Where games like Megabonk and Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor lose me, this one has been my brain-off road dog for what felt like weeks. Maybe months? Time is meaningless in the pit.
Like in every survivors-like, this game is all about you becoming the bullet hell, but the structuring of it really works for me. Instead of wandering a barren plane mowing down enemies this game channels all attackers from coming from the top of the screen to you at the bottom. I’ve been hearing a lot of comparisons to games like Arkanoid or Breakout for how it is displayed to you but I think a more apt comparison would be Space Invaders or Centipede.
This game has a tendency to just keep throwing shit at you. You got a good arsenal of balls to throw at bad guys? Here’s more balls, now you can fuse your balls together so they do a bunch of insane things. You done with a run? No sweat, here’s a city builder to take up your time. Getting a good grasp on how the game plays? Here’s like twenty different characters that all play substantially different than one another. It just doesn’t end.
The fusion system at play here is absurd. Describing a roguelike run to the uninitiated has the same energy as telling your partner about this weird dream you had but it’s my blog so you’re gonna have to indulge me on this one. So I started with a fire ball and eventually was able to upgrade it to a bomb which I eventually upgraded to a nuclear bomb. Another ball I had was a ball that split into a lot of baby balls (yes that’s the in game term for them) on hit and then I eventually managed to fuse that with the nuclear bomb so I wound up with a ball that fired nuclear bombs that then sent out little tiny nuclear bombs out from it. Every run has the tendency to feel like you just cracked this puppy open and started playing in the code.
The visuals of this game are really fun to disassociate to. Upgrade menus are accompanied with this starry, multicolored swirls that just hypnotize me. The characters that you unlock quickly move away from any kind of trope that I recognize in any game. Instead of the classes like fighter, mage, or rogue you get things like the cogitator, or the flagellant.
As soon as they revealed the trailer to this I knew this was gonna be picked up by me. I feel like inside me are two wolves. One has a desire to be surprised by the narrative design of modern video games, and the other is some drooling sicko that just wants flashing lights to bombard them every possible second. This one scratches the itch of the latter in spades.
#4 Dispatch
We’re so back, baby!!! The shuttering of Telltale Games was one of the major heartbreaks of my life. I really credit playing the original The Walking Dead Telltale series with a serious brain unlocking moment of my life. Before that game I was still an avid gamer but it was mostly out of recreation and enjoyment of the medium. Post TWD, I realized the staggering narrative potential of games. Since then a lot of mind blowing stories have come out of the world of gaming, and honestly it was always happening I just wasn’t hip to it.
During the 2024 Video Game Awards, I was watching with my spouse as Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul and Critical Role’s Laura Bailey arrived on the stage to–for one–eye-fuck each other, but also to announce AdHoc Studio’s new game Dispatch. And who is Adhoc? Former Telltale games Alumni have come back in a big way, with their most ambitious project to date. A completely original story set in a new world of a super hero ran Los Angeles.
What I love about Dispatch is how it presents super powers with mundanity. Instead of the exhausting nature of MCU movies where every story is about the universe ending, or the eye-rolling tone of The Boys where plots center around the idea of how fucked up would it be if we had an aquaman who was a sex-pest, Dispatch finds itself comfortably outside of all the noise that comes with the genre.
You follow Robert Robertson III, who comes from a line of superheros that finds himself without his powers. He moves to office work and what we are left with is a story that is far more reminiscent of Dead Poets Society or The Mighty Ducks instead of Invincible. The writing is sharp, the tone is playful, and it has a lot of genuine heart behind all its story beats.
Dispatch also has a very fun dispatching game within it. You have to respond to needs from Torrance citizens, read through the details, and dispatch a hero from your repertoire accordingly. This portion of the game really got its hooks in me, and I wish there was some kind of endless mode you could do instead of just when it came up in the story.
I know Telltale games in the past got criticisms revolving around their release schedules, and yeah I get it, it was really frustrating waiting for the next episode of a game to release instead of having the full thing right from the jump. Dispatch, on the other hand, really benefited from being on the ground floor. I loved getting two episodes of it every week for its run time and I really thought the pacing of the story was perfect. Out of every game on this list, I think this is the one I would recommend literally everyone play. I think its potential appeal goes far beyond people who regularly play video games.
#3 Keep Driving
Hey lookie here! It’s the first thing I wrote about on here! For some in depth rambling about this game check it out here. Keep Driving is an absolute delight. Y/CJ/Y’s roadtrip roguelike has elicited so much emotion from me throughout the year. To part back the curtain for a second, it was one of the games that inspired me to start up this site, because I strongly feel this game needs someone to champion it.
Keep Driving is a game where you go on a roadtrip across the country. Goals and quests come your way throughout your play through but it is immediately evident that this game is far more about the journey than the destination. It feels good to win a run in this game, but where this game really shines is looking along the horizon to music blaring. It’s the quiet stretches of road between rest stops. It is quite literally the friends you make along the way.
This is all presented to you in this stunning sprite work that is lit beautifully depending on the time of day you are driving. It has this warm vintage vibe from the jump that puts me back in the driver seat on long drives. It’s by far the most emotionally evocative game this year for me. I already spilled a good deal of ink on this on my other review so I think I’m just gonna use the rest of this talking about specific things I really enjoy about this game.
I like that you can buy CDs from stores on your trip to permanently unlock more tracks for your playlist. I like the hitchhiker that wants you to drunk drive. I like that if you smoke enough cigarettes every cigarette you smoke instead takes up two cigarettes instead of one. I like the hiking minigame that plays like that one old windows screensaver where you are walking through a maze.
I like that your relationship with your parents is a mechanic within the game. I like finding porn magazines in an abandon campsite and being able to sell it at a pawn store for gas money. I like that it is possible to get an ending in this game where you just work all summer instead of having a car adventure. I like that you have various introspections throughout the game that affect your characters stats and personality. I just really like every decision you can make in this game.
Keep Driving is incredible and my only wish is that it would wind up on more systems than just PC/Steamdeck. I think it handles beautifully and it blows my mind that I see it pop up on so little end of year lists. It is an absolute gem that will forever stay installed on whatever device I can get it on. It’s just so fantastic.
#2 Consume Me
Consume Me absolutely floored me. I can safely say this is the first autobiographical video game I ever played. This game follows the life of Jenny Jiao Hsia from high school, to college, to the development of the game. It was sold to me as a game about developing an eating disorder in your teens, and it does kiiind of start like that. But really, I see it as a game about the impossible standards placed on those assigned female at birth from such an early age.
This game is so personal it feels voyeuristic at times. You plan out Jenny’s day, her diet, her fashion, her studying, her free time (or complete lack thereof). Every second of your life feels like it is being held to such insane standards, and if you fail, everything will fall apart. Oh, and you have to look good the entire time while doing it.
The true magic trick of Consume Me is that this is all presented in such a light-hearted manner that it really helps all the bitter medicine of its messaging go down smooth and sweet. Every action is followed with a hilarious minigame, like walking your dog for chore money (and calorie burning), studying Catcher in the Rye over the summer (or reading the spark notes), or cleaning the bathroom for your–frankly–THANKLESS mother.
Every day in game also is accompanied with a meal planning game, where you have to fit food into a box, think Tetris but with eggs and kale. If you over fill the box or go over your calorie limit, it really sets your day off to a bad start. Eventually the game gets to a point where there are so many things you have to manage that it feels near impossible, and it veers back into being one of the more stressful experiences I’ve had in gaming this year.
Even though this story is so personal it manages to feel so singular and really takes one back to their awkward teenage days where every single thing felt like the utter end of the world. Jenny is such a funny and relatable protagonist to follow, and the direction of her life truly, truly surprised me.
This game is just dripping with style and personality and I cannot wait for more stuff from Jenny Jiao Hsia. Games like this are why I’m so excited for the accessibility of game making tools so we can continue to get personal works that can help us all learn a little bit more about ourselves and each other.
#1 Blue Prince
A lot of the dreams I remember are ones where I walk through abandon spaces. My REM sleep is dominated with liminal hallways, abandon warehouses, and rooms that have felt devoid of human interaction for months. The first thing you read when you go to Dogubomb’s website is “drafting dreams” and their debut game Blue Prince is just that for me. Playing this game feels less about solving a puzzle, and more about walking through the dreams of a madman.
Blue Prince is a game where you inherit a mansion. Everyday the walls shift and the inside changes, and in order to earn your inheritance you must find the 46th room of this 45 room estate. Every door you open has the option of three rooms to walk into, and every room has secrets upon secrets upon secrets. Once you feel like you have a hang of the rules of this house, and you manage to find the 46th room, you realize that your are merely on the tip of an iceberg that seemingly has no end in sight.
This video game has layers to it, man. I feel like every time I see something new in this game it recontextualizes every thing I saw prior to it. Paintings on the wall develop new meaning, paths and rewards are sitting in front of your face from the jump, all it needed was your understanding of the rules the game sets up for you. All you need to do is listen to what the manor is telling you.
This is a game I busted out the ol’ pen and paper for. I have a running notebook of riddles, puzzles, rules, and threads to pull at. Every thread you pull leads to another thread, and beneath the mechanics of the initial game of finding the 46th room is this narrative of revolutionary justice, and beneath that is the story of the greater world at large.
Blue Prince to me is less of a video game and more of a shared insanity that me and all others who partake in it have. It has now infiltrated my dreams, and even after setting it down for months, I manage to pick it up to peruse the halls of Mount Holly, and find something new every single time. It is a game that rewards you not through high scores, or items to improve your run (although there are some good unlocks you can get), but through information. Even if I don’t get the rooms I need to solve one puzzle, I still always leave the game with more information than when I started it.
The soundtrack in the game is just so damn cool too. It is sparse, atmospheric, and just has the sickest sounding bass clarinet I’ve ever heard. I just cannot stop thinking about this game, I cannot stop annoying the ones I love about this game. It makes me feel truly insane the way it has wormed into my skull. It is a masterpiece. Plain and simple.
The whole damn list
Hey thanks for reading my amateur-ass ramblings! I’m really happy to have gotten this done and I hope to be way more active on here through 2026. I love video games so much and I really just want to share why I love them and what they mean to me with the ones I love and that includes you. As a treat, here is the list of every game I played in 2025, ordered:
- Blue Prince
- Consume Me
- Keep Driving
- Dispatch
- BALL x PIT
- FACEMINER
- Hollow Knight: Silksong
- Many Nights a Whisper
- Pokémon Lazarus
- Hades 2
- Q-Up
- Despelote
- Peak
- Blippo+
- Unfair Flips
- Strange Jigsaws
- ARC Raiders
- Split Fiction
- Umamusume: Pretty Derby
- Demonschool
- Avowed
- Keeper
- and Roger
- Without a Dawn
- Herdling
- Wheel World
- Marvel Cosmic Invasion
- The Outer Worlds 2
- Merge Maestro
- Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor
- Megabonk
- Morsels
- Date Everything!
- Unbeatable
- Rematch
- The Children of Clay
- South of Midnight
- Eternal Strands
- To a T
- Pokémon Legends: Z-A
- Digimon Story Time Stranger
- Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4
- Tyrant’s Realm
- Look Outside
- Star of Providence
- Welcome to the Dark Place
- Nubby’s Number Factory
- Evil Egg
- Road Trip to the End of the World
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
- Slots & Daggers
- Super Mariomon
- Mario Kart World
- Whisker Squadron: Survivor
- Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector
- Monster Hunter Wilds
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- The Jackbox Party Pack 11
- Ruffy and the Riverside
- CloverPit
- Doom: The Dark Ages
- Atomfall
- Chaos Zero Nightmare
- The Bazaar
Leave a Reply